Felon voting: Amendment 4 lets felons register in January

Friday

Voting rights advocates cheered the passage Tuesday of Amendment 4, which removes restrictions most felons in Florida face in regaining their right to vote.

The question, which drew the most votes of any of the 12 amendments on the crowded Florida ballot, was approved by 64 percent of the voters, more than enough to pass the state’s 60 percent threshold.

It is designed to go into effect on Jan. 8 without any action by the Legislature.

But as the cheering fades, the same advocates who pushed for Amendment 4 face a new challenge: letting felons long-disconnected from politics and government know that they can register to vote.

"It needs to be a statewide and a local effort," said Cecile Scoon, a civil rights attorney and the first vice president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of Amendment 4's main backers. "The plan should be to find them, educate them, help them and register them."

Estimates of the number of people who could regain the right to vote range from 1.1 million to 1.4 million.

Finding them — and getting them registered — will be a big challenge. And the stakes will be high.

In this election alone, Florida races for U.S. Senate, governor and even agriculture commissioner are so close they will trigger mandatory recounts. Many local races are decided by even smaller margins.

Adding hundreds of thousands or even 1 million new voters could change the shape of Florida elections far into the future.

"It's a game-changer here in the state of Florida," said state Sen. Bobby Powell, D-West Palm Beach. "That number of voters who are not eligible to vote is definitely enough to change the outcome in some of those races."

Governor slowed voting restoration

Florida is one of only three states that bar felons from voting until they take steps to get their voting rights restored.

In seven and a half years, Gov. Rick Scott slowed the process significantly, restoring the voting rights to far fewer felons than his predecessors, an October Palm Beach Post investigation showed. In approving just 3,088 cases, Scott restored the rights to a lower percentage of blacks and a higher percentage of Republicans than his predecessors, the investigation found.

In Florida and elsewhere, minorities are over-represented in state prisons, and minorities tend to support Democrats.

The amendment, which goes into the Florida Constitution, was written to avoid delays from a recalcitrant Legislature.

In past years, legislators have created rules that lessened the impact of voter-initiated constitutional changes, such as one limiting the number of students in public school classrooms. More recently, the Legislature decreed that a medical marijuana initiative did not include the right to smoke the leafy substance.

The Legislature initially failed to approve any language enacting medical marijuana and had to return for a special section.

That scenario won't play out with Amendment 4, supporters say. They are confident that if the Legislature tries to meddle with it, the language of the ballot item will leave no doubts as to the voters' intent.

"It was written intentionally by experts to have no need for any further action," Scoon said.

The amendment also makes clear when it is to take effect: "the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January following the election"

That would be Jan. 8.

At 64 percent, Amendment 4 gathered the eighth-highest percentage of votes among the 12 amendments. It collected more votes than any of them, topping Amendment 11, a constitutional cleanup, by 440,000 votes. It also got 226,000 more votes than the most popular choice, Amendment 12, which tightened lobbying rules for lawmakers and drew nearly 79 percent approval.

All but one of the 12 amendments passed.

Still must register

Under rules adopted by Scott, felons must complete their sentence, pay all fines and wait five to seven years before they can apply to have their voting rights restored.

Amendment 4 will change those rules, allowing some felons — those not convicted of murder or a sex crime — to immediately be eligible to register.

Scoon said she and other Amendment 4 supporters don't like to say the amendment "automatically" restores felon voting rights because that leaves the false impression that felons don't have to do anything.

They do. They must register to vote — just like every other would-be voter.

The League of Women Voters of Florida will look to partner with other agencies to get the word out that felons can register to vote.

"We are already getting phone calls from people who want to help ex-felons register to vote," league President Patricia Brigham said.

Scoon said she'd like to see the state help pay for that effort.

"I think that would appropriate," she said. "This is a new need that wasn't there prior."

While amendment backers are celebrating its passage and sorting through how to reach felons, others have begun to wonder whether and how it might be undermined to keep felons from voting.

"The next thing is to ask whether the Republican-controlled House will encourage them to vote, or whether there will be statutes passed to expand parole and probation in order to disenfranchise the newly enfranchised voters," Rob Scott, executive director of the Cornell University Prison Education Program, said.

That could be a battle for another day as Democrats would likely fight efforts to diminish the impacts of Amendment 4.

“On bulk, I think the measure is very positive," Rob Scott said. "Enfranchising a million voters is nothing small. It is a big deal and a shift in American criminal justice policy thinking in relation to the concept of rehabilitation and second chances."

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